Tuesday, January 15, 2013

A Minimalist Sketching Kit

I can't resist packaging stuff up into kits. There's just something rewarding about the exercise of considering and optimizing the tools you'll need for a job (though, it can be taken too far, when all you do is prepare lists of stuff, and never actually *do anything*). Especially, because I have a fondness for clever hacks that usually do more with less.

Anyway, I figured I might as well taken my sketchingfascination and formalize it into a "kit" (there, that just sounds so official.

The various pencil hardnesses are really an experiment. 5b and 5h are pretty extreme options, which is why I chose them. The different hardnesses let me practice the notion of iteration and modularity in drawing -- something I do all the time in programming, yet struggle with in sketching.

For more inspiration, check out Flickr Sketchkits - a group with about 2,500 pictures of various sketch kits. After browsing through a hefty number of entries, all I've got to say is this: people are amazingly talented.